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5/29/03 Sat: Worked for Arrow 93 doing promotions at the Pasadena Jazz festival. That was pretty cool. Afterwards, went to Mike Huoh's place for a BBQ. I brought over some orange marinated carne asada...that was yummy. Had a fun time there too, talking to people, getting stuffed beyond belief and stuff like that. Sun: Worked for Arrow again at the Pasadena Jazz Festival. After, hung out at a friend's place in La Brea area and watched Ghost Ship. Monday: Bought a 160gig hard drive from CompUSA. Then went over to Rass' apt to do a BBQ. This week, been just working. Today, my manager called me into the conference room to have a discussion about my "performance". It wasn't up to par. Long story short, he told me what he expected of me, told me what I should have been doing, telling me what I have been doing wrong...yada yada. It was a real eye opener for me.
5/22/03 So I found out for sure today that someone in the customer service department was fired today because they were "stealing" aka, giving himself and/or his friends discounts. My company sure does suck in so many ways: calls are monitored..we have to use a dial-out code, any new program that you want to use needs to be authorized, if you want to use a chat program, the mis department must open a port for you, they don't like you going directly to the vps to discuss anything..they want you to go through the management, we don't get discounts but we can give bitchy customers up to $25 off, we don't get benefits until after 6 months, and we don't get paid holidays until after 3 months. These are just some of the things that make this company suck.
5/21/03 Work has been boring and not so boring. When I'm actually doing work, I feel like I'm giving them what they're paying me to do. But sometimes, I'm sitting around, going "What am I suppose to do???" I know I have work to do, but a huge part of it also involves sitting around waiting for advertisers to call me back about ad information. I signed my first and second ad contracts today! woohoo.
5/19/03
5/15/03 So as I came out, I told people that I was leaving. It almost felt like I was leaving my family in a way. I shook hands with the people I worked with; some didn't even know I wasn't part of customer service. One guy said, "Don't be a stranger around here." That was pretty amusing, seeing as how I would still be working there. But you have to understand, the room is very segregated. The customer service people never talk to the purchasing/sales people because 1) They've never interacted before 2) The customer service side was all whites/mexicans/ABC's whereas the other side was almost all FOBs. Other factors play a role, but those are the main reasons. So when I turned on my computer, Chad, my supervisor, already assigned me 3 things to do: 1) Help develop a project to get more people familiar with newegg by creating a case modification contest 2) Research internet sites that are computer related that they have not advertised for, and see if it would be a good/bad one to advertise on 3) find out why alexa.com wasn't posting our site. All this exponentially increased my stress level. I didn't know exactly what I was suppose to do. I didn't know how to approach each thing. Instructions were not given to my fully, so I had to figure out what to do or ask questions. It was just very stressful since I was just thrown into this whole new situation where nothing was structured and everything was open-ended to some degree. What I realized was that each of these jobs given to me was a project. Reflecting on my past, I remembered that what I wanted to do was projects, rather than doing something very monotonous. So I got what I asked for. I just hope that I can deliver the goods and be worth the money they're paying me (though its not that much). Chad said that I had to work double the amount they were paying me. Sort of a way of saying to work my hardest, or give 110%.
5/14/03 Everyone is always saying customer service sucks. I always knew that, but not fully. As many of you may know, I began learning the customer service aspect of the company I work for. Today, the supervisor wanted the guy training me to evaluate my knowledge, phone etiquette, yada yada. So this one guy that called in had a damaged computer case. I offered an exchange for the one he had, but he wanted the case this Friday. I said that wouldn't be possible, and that the earliest he could get it would be Monday. He asked if we would pay for the shipping charges and what not cuz of the damaged case, but I said that it was his responsibility to do that, and that it was Fed Ex's fault and not ours. So our discussion went on for a couple more minutes, and he said, "your customer service sucks. i'm never ordering from you again." It didn't really bother me at all. I replied with, "would you like an RMA?" And I proceeded to give him one. About an hour later, one of the supervisors comes over, and talks to the guy training me about that same guy, trying to figure out what happened. The guy training me was on my side, and told him everything that happened. Apparently, the guy wrote a negative comment on newegg's website or resellerratings, and they wanted to resolve that. If taking back damaged products, waiving the 15% restocking fee, and reshipping a new one isn't good customer service, then what is? What's weird is that we tried accommodating him, but he didn't like what he was getting, so he decided to say something negative instead. Oh well. Some people were just born as dicks.
5/12/03 Today at work, the manager brought in a bunch of tapioca milk tea for people. He asked that whoever wanted one to raise there hands. Up went the hands and came the drinks. 2 of the guys that got drinks (both white - Italian) thought the drink was gross, mainly the tapioca. They thought it was disgusting and weird to chew. Their first experience with boba. I got my ID for Arrow 93.1. Pretty cool. Now I have an ID card for each company I work for. The Arrow one is waay cooler looking than the ABS Computers one - just a piece of paper with my picture laminated.
5/9/03 One conversation I had with Ra. Ra: Have you done any work? Me: Ya, I brought the trash cans up. Ra: No, I moved them. M: No, I moved them from the bottom to here. R: I did half the work. M: If you did half the work, you would've moved them from the stairs to here. And he STFU. Today, the company I work for treated the employees to a lunch for getting above a 8.0 on www.resellerratings.com. We went to Olive Garden as the reward (though I didn't contribute to that at all). The big event of the day was when I answered a couple phone calls. I'm not fully trained on the use of the programs and what to say to the people. The first customer I answered had this REALLY REALLY REALLY thick accent that I could barely understand. One guy was asking about something I never even heard of. And one was a fairly simple question I believe. This was one huge step in my learning process. WOOHOO.
5/7/03
5/6/03
5/5/03 Today, I really didn't do much but listen in on the customer service calls. What I noticed after I sat down was the huge dichotomy between the two sections in the room I was in. On the left side was the purchasing/sales/marketing stuff where everyone was Asian, mainly FOBS (This is the area I'll be sitting in) and on the right side was the customer service reps, consisting of mainly Mexicans, some whites, and 2 Asians. On the left side were the salaried people and on the right, hourly. On the left; quietly working employees. On the right; noisy, rowdy, all over the place and younger employees. Basically, all I did was listen in on conversations that people had with people calling in and chatted with a bunch of the people around me. This one chick asked how much I was making, and I said "Not that much." "How much? I use to make the most. I got $9.50/hr." "Oh, I make salary." I think she thought that I was going to be a customer service rep. Guess she didn't know I was in sales/marketing. So I'm just wondering how much everyone else makes. Them customer service people sure don't get paid that much. I also found out that I don't work for www.abspc.com but instead, work for their sister company www.newegg.com .
5/4/03 My weekend didn't start off as well as I expected. At the airport, I went through the metal detector, and I was having problems there already. Something in my carry-on luggage alerted the security guards. What they found was something I had been searching for ever since I moved back; my swiss army knife. I was hoping I could check it in with my carry-on, but when I went downstairs to try that, the lady said that it would NEVER make it to Philly. So, I ended up giving it to someone that worked there. I went up to this lady, and was like "You want this? I didn't know I had it on me, and I can't check in my luggage. Give it to your grandkid." "I don't have any grandkids" "Give it to your children?" "I don't have any children" "Your husband, aunt uncle?" "No husband." "Take it for yourself then." and then I quickly ran away to get to the boarding gate. I was pissed because before I left, I left my keychain at home cuz there was a mini swiss army knife on that, and I tried to make sure I had nothing on me that would be confiscated or that I would have to throw away. But I ended up having to throw away something. Second time this has happened. ARGH. So, I took a red-eye flight out to Philly at 10:20pm, and arrived at 6:00. I had a difficult time trying to sleep on the plan, as usual. For me, 6:00 was actually 3:00. We checked in to our hotel on the U Penn campus, and crashed for a couple hours. After that, me, my bro and Rob went sight seeing around Philly. We went to an art museum, a former prison, went to get pizza, tried going to another museum, rested by the pier, and realized an hour or so later that the yacht we were chilling next to was Forbes' yacht (as in Forbes' Magazine), went and walked down South Street, chilled at a coffee shop, went to shoot some pool to kill time, and then went to the Morimoto Restaurant at 9:40. The restaurant was jam packed with people, mostly an older crowd. Everyone was better dressed than us. Everyone but me got the Omakase (Chef's recommendation) set. On the menu, you have the option of ordering a $80, $100, or $120 and up set. They chose to get a $200 set. It was one of the most expensive orders of the night as far as Omakases goes. Every dish was a few bites of just the most delicately arranged and savory meal we've ever had/seen. I just got a tofu appetizer and a New York Steak. The tofu came out real early. The guy brought out the tofu in this big pot. He opened up the lid, and it was just liquid. He started giving us a story, mixed in some sea salt, stirred the mix, and told us that in 8 minutes, the tofu will be done and someone will come by and serve it. That was VERY interesting since I had never in my life seen someone make fresh tofu. All the wasabi served was the REAL wasabi, not the powder stuff that's served in most restaurants. Anyways, I was able to take some pictures of the restaurant and some of the food before my battery died. I would have taken a picture of each dish, but the battery was almost dead. I actually tried some seafood!!! OMG!! I tried some sauce with king crab in it and tried a very tiny piece of lobster. The Omakase set they got was a 12 course sampler that lasted around 3 and a half hours. So we got in at around 9:40pm and left around 1:00am We did A LOT of walking that day. My legs hurt for most of the day, and I woke up the next day with sore legs. When we
left Philly, we had a layover in Chicago. When we left, I had a
window seat, and as I looked out, I was amazed at how beautiful
Chicago looked. There were a lot more trees than what I normally
see in LA, more parks, yada yada. It just looked like a great
place to grow up away from the city life and all that. yup.
Ok...that's all I Have to say. Pictures will be posted up when I
can get them off the computer. 5/2/03 Tonight, I'm off to Philly on a red-eye flight. I'll be arriving in Philly at 6am, so technically, that would be 3am for me. Ugh. I'm gonna be dead tired by early afternoon or late morning. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a nap. I will be taking a digi cam with me for the trip, and will be taking as many pictures as possible, both random and picture worthy. We'll just have to wait to see what I decide to post up. I WILL be working on the music video I kept saying I would, but it will only be for one day and maybe 6 hours for $50. This will be an awesome experience because I finally get to see an actual production, and I might be able to see some famous people. As I mentioned before, Mariah Carey is suppose to make a cameo. But what I just found out today is that Michael Jackson might be in it too! As grotesque looking as he is, he still is a pop-icon, and being able to meet him would just be awesome. Hopefully, I can bring a digi cam on the set and take some pictures. But who knows. I'll find out. Oh yea. Ever since I passed the 18 year old mark or something, my mom has always said "you need to act more mature" or "if you are at an office, you can't act so immature" or "people don't like it if you make so many faces", yada yada. From my experience, it's quite the contrary. Today, while I was at the production office, I was having a fun ol' chat with a 31 and 33 year old guy. We were acting very immature and having a gay ol time. So for my mom to tell me to start acting more mature at my age while the two guys in their 30s were acting mature was very contradicting. Also, I've had people say that my facial expressions were very amusing, unlike my mom who thinks I need to stop making them.
5/1/03 This afternoon, I got a call from one of the temp agencies, FINALLY, about a job. But its a week too late since I got the Marketing Asst job, which is definitely better than just an Admin job that I would have gotten. The pay would be the same, slightly more.
4/30/03
4/29/03 Today, while I was the office helping out with casting again, I was talking to a fellow intern there. He's 28 I believe, and over lunch, we were talking about the job I will be starting on Monday. I'm not going to mention the little details, but he brought up something interesting that I didn't think about for the past week. If I were given an option to continue working on this film with no pay and possibly long and tedious hours, or work at a steady job, with decent pay, but could possibly end up being something I dread, which would I choose. Without a doubt, I would definitely choose working on a film. I realized, but not only today, that what I truly enjoy is working on projects, working and interacting with people, running around trying to get things done, have SPONTANEITY! Not a single day has gone by so far that I dreaded going to work, even though I knew I wasn't getting paid. Every single day was different and kept me on my feet, making me adjust myself to adapt to the situation. I enjoyed everything I was doing. I've learned so much already about pre-production for a film, improved my interaction skills in person and over the phone, and learned how to think on the spot and try and come up with something creative, truthful, and at the same time, deceiving so that I could get myself out of a situation. For example, people were calling today to ask if they were being called back tomorrow for a read through with the executive producers. I knew that there weren't going to be called back tomorrow, nor for the read through for a different script on Thursday. So I had to devise ways of letting them down politely, while still giving them some length of hope to hang on to, even though I knew that they had no shot for the projects at hand. Now here comes my dilemma, which I don't think will happen...yet. I haven't heard back from ABS computers about the status of my job. They were to email me back a couple days after they did a background check on me. It's been three work days now. If they don't email me by Friday, then I'm assuming they really didn't want me. I know, I'm being very pessimistic about this whole situation, but in a way, I kind of want that to happen, though the added income and real work experience would greatly improve my resume and give me a paying job. I would happily go straight back to interning at the film with not a single ounce of hesitation. I've realized all my life that I wanted to get into the entertainment industry. And I finally succeeded with this non-paying internship. But now, after having a lick of it, and having it all taken away by a paying job, I'm now like a crying baby with it's candy taken away by an adult, just wanting it back. It's time for me to grow up. But I don't want to. Not just yet. Hopefully, after I've built some connections within the industry through my attempt at trying to help out during the nights or weekends of production, I can go back into that field. Now I have focus in my life. Get back into the industry. I am the type of person who would rather have a really bad paying job, but was something I completely and utterly enjoyed doing.
4/28/03 Today, I helped out with the second casting call for the independent movie I'm working on. Last Friday, I was calling people all day to try and get people to come in and audition. Today was the end result of my work. Things went real smoothly compared to the first time we did the casting call. I scheduled people to come in this time at 5-minute intervals instead of having a cattle call of 100 or so people jam packed into a room. Of course, we had people show up late and people trying to get a chance to audition that couldn't make it to the time we were auditioning. Oh yeah, did I mention that almost everyone is black? I surprisingly got along well with almost everyone that showed up. Some people were just a blast to talk to while some were not very social at all. And Lisa/Paul, no, I will not join Xanga. I like my format here. What happened to your Xanga post about running your hand through Paul's hair while watching the game???
4/24/03 So technically, I have 4 jobs. 1)the internship 2)typing out the book for this guy 3)the radio gig 4)the computer thing. This afternoon, I went to Sherman Oaks again to help out with the movie again. Looks like I'll be making more casting calls and calls for call backs. There's going to be A LOT of calling of people tomorrow. Interesting read from an email I got from Glo... This is priceless, worth the time reading for a good laugh. If
you have raised kids (or been one), and gone through the pet
syndrome
4/23/03
4/22/03 Just to remind you guys...when I was in SF, helping Brandon move his stuff from his old apartment to the new one, I accidentally stepped in human shit! Today, I had an interview at KCBS, Arrow 93.1. I arrived at the station, met the supervisor chick, filled out some paper, went into her office, and the first thing she says after sit down is, "I really don't have any questions for you." I was thinking to myself "OKAAAAY." So for like an hour, we just chatted about the radio station, what the differences were between the one I worked for in SF and this one, and about Alhambra..she grew up there. We talked about the changes to Alhambra, with the opening of all the new restaurants, the new theater, and her optometrist on the corner of Garfield and Main. I found out early in our hour-long conversation that I was hired. After that, we just basically chatted about anything. I'll be going back later this week to fill out the proper paperwork. It also pays more than my previous promotion assistant job. This one pays $9.50. That's $2.50 more than my other one. But the other definitely has more perks. After that, I went to Westwood to see this guy I was doing a side job for. He was telling me that I should get into Loan Consulting because that's where the money's at. I'm typing out his book, and he thought that it would be good for me to do this so that I would learn about the field. He said that he'd be selling his 6 course book for $2500, and I'd be getting it for free. But he somewhat convinced me of going into that field...we'll see what happens. After that, I went to Monterey Park to go to an escrow company for an "interview". It wasn't much of one, since the lady kept talking about what the position would be like, said that I would be working with LOTS of females, since in escrow, many of the positions are held by women, but she wanted more men to get into it. She didn't really ask me much. She did ask what position I wanted, and I just smiled and was like "I don't know..my dad just sent my resume in and told me to come in and see what openings you have." Not very professional, but hey, its an Asian office.
4/21/03 Ugh Something interesting that my old roommate, Henry had on his AIM profile (taken from Chris Rock): You know the world is going crazy when
4/17/03
4/16/03
4/14/03 So as I walked into the office, there was this really ugly girl who looked like someone I would NEVER EVER in my life associate with in school. I know that sounds horrible, but if you saw what I saw, you'd think the same thing. She would be with a group of friends that had low self-esteem and would all look ugly. So, when the director came, we all sat in the conference room, introduced ourselves, and discussed what the whole internship process would be like. We would be taking on multiple hats due to the budget of the film, which is quite low I'm assuming. Most of the time spent here was downtime...just chilling, chatting, and seeing what was going on. I'm not exactly sure how this whole process will turn out, but the director swears that the experience will be very engaging and a huge learning process. Ugly girl's dad was apparently waiting outside this whole time, and he was just going to wait there until we were finished, but the thing was, we didn't know when we would be finished. We told her to go outside, and tell her dad that he didn't have to wait for her, because we didn't know how long we would be, but she came back, and said that her dad would just wait. Robert, the assistant producer said that the dad should just "blaze" and that we would figure it out somehow. "Blaze" is something I've never heard of in my life for leave. So one of the other girls had to go out and talk to the dad. So around 12:30, we all went to Sunset area to find a potential spot for us to do some production work, mainly casting I believe. We needed to find a fairly small space, maybe just an office space in someone's office, for about $400/month. We drove past UCLA through Westwood? and for some odd reason, I felt ALL this pretentiousness in the air. The houses were HUGE and extravagant like none other, and I saw some nice cars (Ferrari F50? and a Porsche Cayenne?). We drove to Sunset area, and started calling up real estate agencies, inquiring about the space and seeing how much it would cost. For the most part, none of these places were renting out for short periods of time, at least not like 1 month short. After maybe a half hour to an hour, we gave up, and headed back. Three factors made this whole situation worse: 1) The driving 2) The weather 3) I used up a bunch of my anytime minutes making calls. This whole time, I just couldn't get the fact that I didn't like that one girl (the ugly one) for the longest time. She never had anything productive to say, looked ugly, dressed horribly, and just had nothing productive to say!!!! While we were looking for spaces, she would point out signs. I'd be like "did you get the #?" "no". I did all the talking too, even though I really didn't know much about what was going on. She also has no car! So while I was taking ugly back, I was like, "So are you in school?" "No" "What do you mean? Are you in between High School and College?" "Kind of"?!?!?!?!....and when we were on the freeway, I was asking her if she wanted to call her dad while we were on our way so that she wouldn't have to wait.. I was like "Do you want to call your dad so that he can pick you up?" "I'll just wait til we get there." "Well, don't you want to call so that he'll be there when I get there?" "No...I don't think he's home." "Well don't you just want to try?" After a couple more of these, she whipped out her cell, and called home. "Hello? Jenny? Dad? are you home? <someone picks up the phone> Oh hey dad, can you come pick me up..blah blah blah....Oh, so my dad was home. He's normally not at home." WTF..weirdo! Afterwards, I met up with a friend of mine, Devin, in Sherman Oaks (He actually lives REALLY close to the studio), and had a really late lunch at this Greek restaurant. It was pretty good.
4/12/03 This past week, I did a bunch of the same stuff as the previous 9-10 months. Sitting on my ass doing nothing. I did get an invitation to go to Mike Huoh's get together on Wednesday night for dinner. Burgers and potato wedges. The night was an escape from my usual boring life, and it was fun being able to talk to people on a social level again. I left with 3 boxes of Perugina chocolates that retail for $30 each. On the way back home, I was making a left turn onto Huntington, but accidentally made a left turn onto the lane for incoming traffic, so I had to bust a U, then make a right turn back onto the street I originally made that left turn from, the made another U, then made a left turn onto the correct lane. Went to go eat out everyday. Had Yoshinoya's twice, a Mexican hole in the wall once, and a GOOD Mexican restaurant another.
4/7/03 What's red and yellow and looks good on a hippie? Highlight the space to the right of this line for answer: Fire
4/6/03 So, would it be safe to say that I don't know my geography if I told you that I didn't know where Chicago is, and that if you asked me where Baghdad was before the war started, I'd say India and not Iraq.?
4/3/03
4/2/03
4/1/03 My first sexual experience: When he touched me sexually and made me squirt all over the place.
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